For your lockdown distraction. Ten questions per day. Posted in the morning before work. Answers added to the end of the post around 3pm (work dependent).
1. What is the (excellent) name of the earliest United Kingdom Act of Parliament to mention New Zealand?
2. North Shore and Nelson = 4.
New Plymouth, Gisborne, Napier, Whanganui and Invercargill = 3.
Kaikohe, Hastings, Hutt Valley and Timaru = 2.
What comes next?
3. List the five constituent parts of the Realm of New Zealand (at least in terms of those listed in Clause I of the Letters Patent).
4. Where did the first Court of Appeal sit in New Zealand (not including the “Court of Appeals” established by the Supreme Court Amendment Ordinance 1846 (Sess. VII, No. 3) that constituted the Governor and the Executive Council to sit as a Court of Appeals; I mean the first proper court of record)?
5. Which Supreme Court judge, earlier a prosecutor in the Hulme-Parker murder trials, delivered one of New Zealand’s most famous legal lines (famous not just in law but in public consciousness)? The line itself is in iambic pentameter.
6. What was the name of the forerunner of the New Zealand Law Journal?
7. Plenty of good fake law firm names – Dewey, Cheatum and Howe etc. – but the best (or my favourite at least) is Peabody, Peabody, Peabody, Hoots, Toots, and Peabody. Which author invented Peabody et al?
8. “I have often observed that when a man says he has acted on principle he has generally done something mean.” So spoke a late 19th and early 20th century Supreme Court judge. He sentenced Minnie Dean to death. And he was the first New Zealander to sit in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Who was he?
9. As part of the group Aotearoa, what is the name of Williams J’s hit song from the 1980s?
10. Name New Zealand’s first female law professor.
Answers:
1: The Murders Abroad Act 1817. 2: Porirua and Papakura = 1. This is the number of judges assigned to locations in decreasing order, according to the District Court site. 3: New Zealand, Cook Islands, Niue, Tokelau, and the Ross Dependency. 4: Christchurch (in 1863). 5: This was Mahon J (and the line was “an orchestrated litany of lies”). 6: Butterworth’s Fortnightly Notes – if you go back to the earliest editions of the New Zealand Law Journal in Lexis Advance you’ll see they actually have that title. 7: PG Wodehouse, my fave. 8: This was Sir Joshua Strange Williams. 9: Maranga Ake Ai. 10: Shirley Smith.
That’s all for the daily quizzes for a while I think. I’ve got a hearing set down urgently next week that will consume some time, plus Auckland sounds like it’s going to be in alert level 4 for at least two more weeks (and I ain’t got that many questions!!). Thanks for playing along. If I can be bothered, this might come back weekly. Stay safe!
Strictly obiter 